MRI Scan: Patients eye view

Before getting my diagnosis of LPHS, I had to go through several tests.

I will go through them briefly in the next few posts to give a better understanding of how they feel from the patients viewpoint.

MRI scan:
I’d only ever seen MRI scans on TV before, and I thought there was something worrying and almost sinister about disappearing into the tunnel, so I was pretty nervous when I got to the hospital.

Make sure you wear comfortable clothing, and if possible without metal fastenings as you’ll be allowed to go through the scanner in your own clothes then.  Sadly due to my bra underwire and jeans zip, it was backless gown again for me!

When you’re taken into the scan room, you are laid down onto the platform and a brace-type thingy is placed over the area they will be scanning – in this case, the lower abdomen.  The technicians then strap you to the bed in order to make sure you can’t move very much, and give you a buzzer – this is used to get the attention of the staff as once the scan is in progress they can’t hear you… the machinery gets pretty loud so they also give you some headphones to wear (You can even take along a CD to listen to if you prefer).

Once I was comfortable, the technicians began the scan.  They operate the machine from an ante-room off of the main room you are in, so you can only hear their instructions over an intercom system.  The platform you are laying on moves in and out of the main body of the machine according to the controls operated by the technicians – the inside of the ‘tunnel’ is just smooth white plastic – it’s not very dark in there as I thought it might be but it did feel a little claustrophobic.  I found taking deep breaths quite soothing.


Once they have you in the correct position, they ask you to take a deep breath in, breathe out half way and then hold it – this is when they will take the image.  A tip I figured out was to see how long the imaging takes on the first go, and then you know how long you have to hold your breath for on subsequent images – this helped as I find I can get a bit panicked when holding my breath without knowing when I will be able to breathe normally again.

The whole process is repeated over and over again and in my case I was there for 25-30 minutes.

All in all, it wasn’t the most pleasant thing I’ve ever done in my life but it was most definitely not as bad as I thought it would be, and anything that could lead to controlling my pain is completely worth-while.

I also had a CT scan during the investigations into my condition - the process is very similar to the MRI scan but the machine is far shallower so instead of going into "the tunnel", you are passed back and forth through something that resembles a large polo!